The Girl Who Disappeared
by ThePaperBagPrincess
Summary: In the darkest of times, they reached out to each other. But she disappeared into the night, to fight a battle he couldn't join. The laughter is gone but the memories linger, and perhaps the Disappeared can be found. For Amy, with love.


**Disclaimer and A/N combined: I don't own anything except a single character (Christabel Sawyer). Also, the the behaviour of my characters is not necessarily behaviour I condone, or see as acceptable. T****his is not a sweet fluffy romance. It is intended to be realistic (within the HP canon), not to portray an ideal world, or idealised characters. It is also told from Blaise Zabini's point of view, therefore opinions on situations and other characters are his, not mine.**

**Credit and thanks to You're Amyzing for tips on the characterisation of Blaise and Parvati, including Parvati's choice of career.**

* * *

**The Girl Who Disappeared**

_**For Amy (You're Amyzing), who converted me to this pairing.**_

It wasn't that he'd never noticed her. He looked at Gryffindors as well, for all he was a Slytherin. And she was a Pureblood, so that made it all right. It wasn't that he _liked_ her. He noted the attractive girls with an abstract interest, that was all. If they were also Purebloods, respectable, available, accessible and willing, he might do something about it.

_Respectable _was the key word. He didn't necessarily mean what other people meant by it. For him, it was a literal word.

People he could respect.

That excluded the Weasley girl, simply because she was a Weasley, although he acknowledged freely that she was attractive.

And Patil was a Gryffindor, and while that wouldn't necessarily have counted her out, there were other things to consider. Like the fact that she was best friends with Brown the Giggler, for whom nobody could possibly have _any _respect (especially after the spectacle she made of herself over Ron Weasley, of all people), and whom Blaise did not find remotely attractive. Then there was the fact that Patil also seemed to be friends with Potter the Golden Boy, and even went to the Yule Ball with him in Fourth Year. And the fact that in their First Year flying lesson, she had defended Longbottom the Idiot. No, Parvati Patil was definitely one of _them_, not one of _us._

Her sister was another matter. Blaise liked Ravenclaws; they could hold an intelligent conversation. He and Padma had experimented a bit in broom cupboards in their Third Year, and somehow had ended up as sort-of-friends. Of course, he had lost a bit of respect for Padma when she went to the Ball with Weasley, but as he had been taking Daphne Greengrass, he couldn't really complain. Greengrass had long blonde hair and blue eyes you could lose yourself in and legs to die for, and anyway, Padma told him afterwards that she had had a miserable time, and never intended to speak to Ron Weasley again.

Of course, there was really nothing between him and Padma except a slightly stiff sort of friendship (she was much more interested in Michael Corner) but sometimes she looked at him with an expression he couldn't judge, but which made him think uneasily that she might possibly have seen beyond his mask a little way.

Then, of course, came the war.

Blaise really had nothing to do with the build up to the war. Of course, he was _there_ while Draco and Greg and Vince and Pansy and Millie and the rest talked about the Dark Lord, and blood purity, and the way things would be when the right side had won and the Dark Lord had come to power. And he _agreed _with it, in principle. In blood purity, and wizarding superiority and all the rest of it.

But he didn't entirely agree with torture and murder and enslaving Muggle-borns. And when Seventh Year came, it made him sick, the way those awful Carrows ran the place, with Snape letting them get away with anything they wanted. He had no respect for the Carrows; they didn't behave in a way that would have earned it. They were just cowards and bullies, and low-born cowards and bullies at that.

And _Snape_. Blaise had never respected Snape simply for being Snape. He knew the man's history – or enough of it – and he knew perfectly well that Snape's father had been a Muggle, and that he had lived in poverty as a child. And Merlin, couldn't the man wash his hair?

But during Blaise's years at school, Snape had proved himself a man of capabilities and brains, and Blaise had come to respect him – even to like him – for that.

Now though, the last shreds of that respect were fading. Snape had allowed these... _people_ to take over Hogwarts. The Headmaster seemed, Blaise thought with disgust, nearly as scared as Draco was. And anyone could see that Draco was terrified.

Blaise kept out of it. He didn't parade round with the Inquisitorial Squad, or whatever ridiculously self-important name they'd given themselves. A fancy name for a bunch of thugs, as he had come to see Greg and Vince and Pansy.

They were horrible, tense days. Whenever he hung around with his usual crowd, they were all, with the exceptions Christabel Sawyer and, surprisingly, Draco, talking excitedly about vile things, like torturing children and feeding people to the Acromantula (they hadn't actually done that one yet, but it was one of Vince Crabbe's more pleasant ideas). Draco was largely silent during these conversations. Pansy seemed to think that this was because he was too high in the Dark Lord's circle to be entertained by such trivial pursuits, and because he knew things that were too important to talk about, and she revelled in that thought and fawned all over him. Blaise, however, was sure that the silence was simply because Draco was getting cold feet.

Christabel avoided the discussions too and, like Blaise, avoided being roped into Inquisitorial duties whenever possible. She, like him, had no taste for blood and pain and death. Neither, he thought, had Daphne, but Daphne was better at pretending.

He got talking to Parvati in Divination, a subject that none of his fellow Slytherins had taken. He himself had taken it because it seemed like an easy option, rather than because he believed in it. She, of course, _did_ believe in it though, so he said nothing about that. Her friend, Brown the Giggler, was suspicious of him, but Parvati knew him as a friend of Padma's and was not unfriendly.

"I _know_ he's a Slytherin," he heard her whisper heatedly to Brown one day, "But Merlin, Lavender, isn't it prejudices like that that we're trying to fight against?"

After Easter, students started to disappear. Longbottom went first, and there were uneasy whispers that he had been taken away... that he had been arrested... that he had been _disposed of_. His friends, however, did not seem concerned, while Snape and the Carrows muttered worriedly between themselves. Blaise suspected that if Longbottom had really disappeared, it was of his own free will.

Then others went – not all at once, but in ones and twos, disappearing from school life. By that time, though, everyone knew that they were not really disappearing. They were still here, somewhere in the school; rumours went round that somebody had seen Longbottom disappearing around a corner in a corridor, or that Seamus Finnegan had been spotted in the dungeons. Graffiti began to appear on the walls again, the way it had before Christmas, and it was signed with the initials of those who were in hiding.

It was only after Brown disappeared too that anything actually happened between him and Parvati, and then it was really just two lonely (and slightly frightened) people reaching out to each other for some sort of comfort in the dark times.

She was different from any of the others. Padma had been sweet and inexperienced and slightly hesitant. Daphne had been hard and insistent and in control.

Parvati was warm and eager and could make him laugh. He sort of liked that.

But she was a Gryffindor, and she wanted to fight. And he was a Slytherin, and he'd never considered fighting. He tried to persuade her to keep her head down. That way, when the Dark Lord finally won, she might stand a chance, despite her associations. Fighting was all very noble, but sometimes you had to think of the long term. And there was no point sticking your head above the parapet unnecessarily.

When he talked like that, though she got angry. And eventually, the day came when she put herself between a First Year and Pansy Parkinson, who was trying to cast the Cruciatus Curse (Blaise personally didn't actually think Pansy was capable of casting the Cruciatus Curse properly; she wasn't competent enough). But Parvati had to play the hero, and after that, she too had to disappear.

They met in a dark empty classroom that night. He wanted to ask her not to go, but that would have been undignified as well as pointless. She had to go. She had no choice now, unless she wanted to be subjected to the Cruciatus Curse herself (by somebody a lot better at it than Pansy Parkinson). So he kissed her, and she tasted of cinnamon, the way she always did. And he held her hard, and whispered that she should be careful, and she looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

"I think the time for '_careful_' ended a while ago," she whispered back, "But I'll try not to die, if that's what you mean."

And that was really about as much as he could ask, in the days and weeks that followed. He missed her more than he thought he would. But then came the day when Potter returned, and the Dark Lord arrived and the battle was joined.

She would fight, because she was a Gryffindor, and she was Potter's friend, and she hated the Dark Lord and the Dark Arts, and she was brave. But he was a Slytherin, and his life had been filled with expectations that he fought to live up to. The expectations of his mother, who doted fiercely on him and believed that he was so much more than he was. The expectations of Pureblood Society, where he must behave as befitted his status. The expectations of his friends, to stick with the Slytherins. And the expectations of the rest of the school, who had no hopes of Slytherin House joining them.

So he left. He left with the rest of his house, and that was the moment that he realised just how wide the gulf was between _them_ and _us_; between _him_ and _her._

* * *

After the war, though, he wasn't sure what _us_ meant any more.

The Dark side was going down, and people like Draco and Greg and Pansy and Millicent (Vince had not survived the battle) would surely go down with it. Theo had somehow managed to come out of it with his reputation intact (Blaise had no idea how, but that was typical of Theo), and Daphne had flung herself on him as her ticket to a respectable life. She was helped in her efforts to restore her status by the fact that her sister – the one nobody had even noticed before – had returned to school as a Slytherin Prefect, and was declaring to everyone that if she had been of age, she would have stayed to fight against the Dark Lord. Astoria Greengrass was doing her best to mend Slytherin's shattered reputation.

Nobody seemed quite sure of Blaise, though. Nobody in his family had openly declared for the Dark Lord, and nobody really knew much about him – that was how he had deliberately kept it. The Aurors came round to ask him questions. He answered honestly. Yes, he had seen torture committed at Hogwarts, both by staff and students. Yes, he could give names. Yes, the students had been acting under severe duress. No, he personally had never tortured anyone. No, he had never held sympathies with the Dark Lord. No, he had not fought in the battle, on either side.

They went away, apparently satisfied.

He met up with Christabel Sawyer, who had not changed much. She was still the calm, cool ice-queen and she, like him, needed to distance herself from the events of the war. To re-establish herself as a member of respectable society.

They both had money available to them. Blaise's mother was living in Italy, so he removed himself there and invited Christabel to join him. They started seeing each other as a means of mutual self-preservation really.

Love? He supposed he loved her, although that was really the least of either of their concerns. They married because it made sense; because they both came from families who were desperately clinging to their old status, and together they could move both of their families away from the precipice.

It worked, more or less. The old Pureblood dynasties had lost a lot of their old power, but the Zabinis became respectable (at least, as respectable as they had ever been) again. Draco's name was cleared – how that came about, Blaise wasn't exactly sure, because if any of them were guilty, Draco was – and they renewed their old friendship. Draco had changed though; he was uninterested in power, or even status, and wanted only to keep his head down and get on with the life he'd managed to pull from the gutter with the help of little Astoria Greengrass (that was one match that had taken Blaise completely by surprise).

Theo was engaged in some sort of murky dealings, which neither Draco nor Blaise really wanted any part of, so they drifted away. Greg became a bit of a mess after Vince died; drank his money away and couldn't hold a job down. Christabel kept in touch with Daphne, but cut Millicent and Pansy away ruthlessly. Millicent, Pansy and Greg were the price that had to be paid to regain a place in society, although Blaise thought that Draco still had some contact with Greg.

He hadn't seen Parvati Patil since that night in Hogwarts, when she had disappeared.

He knew that she was alive, and that her family were doing well. Padma taught his daughters at Hogwarts, but he didn't bother to get in touch. Because whatever he and Christabel did, it was still _them_ and _us_, and he thought it always would be. Some rifts could not be healed.

He thought about her sometimes though; about her warmth, about her smile, about the taste of cinnamon when he kissed her. He and Christabel no longer kissed; they shared a house but not a bedroom. They both had discreet affairs with other people, and they were both aware of these. It didn't seem to matter, because they didn't seem really to be married any more. They stayed together; they gave the girls a family life, although they were so distant with each other that Blaise often wondered bitterly whether his children might not be better off without that sort of family. He thought that it was only a matter of time before she left him.

Christabel did not make him laugh. She never had.

* * *

He met her again in unfortunate circumstances. There had recently been an outbreak of Muggle attacks; the first serious one since the aftermath of the war. Ex-Death Eaters like Draco were first in line for suspicion, and their friends and associates were second.

Blaise and Draco called a damage control meeting. Theo and Daphne were involved somehow, Blaise was sure, so that couple needed to be kept at a distance for a while. Draco was reluctant to do this, because Daphne was his sister-in-law and Astoria wouldn't like it. They argued, and nothing was resolved (Blaise even began to suspect that his old friend wasn't as innocent in the whole affair as he was pretending) when Blaise finally emerged from Draco's house, already annoyed, to find several photographers and a bunch of reporters outside the house.

He pushed them aside, answering their questions with a brusque 'No comment.' If he had anything to say, he would say it to the Aurors, just like he had last time.

Then he made the fatal mistake of looking up into a pair of familiar brown eyes that were looking at him with something approaching fear. She was there in front of him; the girl who'd disappeared. Not a girl any more. A woman, but still the same Parvati.

The other journalists had already turned their attention back to the Malfoy house, giving Blaise up as a bad job (most of them had already tried once or twice already with him and got nowhere), and she was just standing there, her quill and parchment held loosely in her hands, looking at him.

"Parvati," he said stiffly, "I didn't realise you'd gone in for journalism."

"No," she agreed softly, "No reason why you should, really. We didn't stay in touch, did we?"

He would never know what made him say the next words. Some fleeting memory of the scent of cinnamon in her black curls, and the gleam of torchlight in dark eyes, and the catch in her voice as she had said goodbye, perhaps. Or maybe of the sound of her laughter, and the way her cheek had dimpled when she smiled, and the fact that she had been the only person who could laugh at him without him minding.

Whatever it was, the words were out before he realised it, and Blaise Zabini _never_ spoke without thinking.

"Do you want a coffee?"

She looked at him, the nervousness in her expression giving way to slight amusement.

"Do you mean with you? Now?"

He shrugged elegantly.

"Why not? It's been a long time. We could catch up. Do you want to?"

She glanced down at the quill in her hand, and then back at her colleagues.

"Do you want to give me an exclusive interview on your take on the latest Muggle attack?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"That was spoken almost like a Slytherin."

Her eyes danced.

"You have to learn to think a bit like a Slytherin sometimes, in my line of work."

He thought about her proposal. After all, what harm could it do? It was only a coffee, and only an interview.

"All right," he smiled at her, "Shall we?"

* * *

Her cheek still dimpled when she smiled.

Her hair still smelt of cinnamon when he kissed it.


End file.
